Northampton 41-38 Bath
Fin Smith clinches win with last kick
If only these two could play each other every week. Having wowed the rugby world a fortnight ago with their Champions Cup quarter-final at the Rec, scoring 11 tries between them, here they went one better and scored 12. Six each, obviously. The scores were level as the clock ticked red. The crowd were as breathless as the players.
And then, alas, the winning moment came not from a moment of brilliance – although Fin Smith tried it with his dummy and drop-goal attempt. He missed that, but the television match official had spotted one of those agonising high tackles by a tall man on a dipping, slightly shorter one. Enoch Opoku-Gyamfi it was who clipped the bustling Henry Pollock on the chin. Smith did not miss the subsequent penalty, the first penalty taken at goal, the last kick of the match.
Tommy Freeman scored a hat-trick to pull him one shy of Ben Cohen on the list of Northampton try-scorers – and we thought his third had won the match, another brilliant move setting him free through the outside-centre channel, where he combined with Tom Litchfield to score with barely five minutes to go. But Bath struck again in those last five minutes, Kepu Tuipulotu driving low round the fringes of a ruck.
